A former Whitehall official has revealed that he and his
colleagues were given 10 minutes to make the case to the prime
minister over what became the world's biggest civil IT-based
modernisation programme.
The disclosure was made by John Pattison, who was headquarters
director of research and e-champion at the Department of Health. He
was speaking on
Radio 4's
"Wiring the NHS" documentary on the £12.4bn National Programme
for IT, to which Computer Weekly contributed.
Pattison told the BBC that he was invited to Number 10 in
February 2002 to a seminar on IT where he and his colleagues were
"given 10
minutes to make the case" for a national programme.
Pattison told the BBC:
"They invited us to a seminar on it in number 10 and we were
given 10 minutes to make the case We quickly came down to
suggestions for the four elements that should be developed in the
first phase: first of all a platform, a solid dependable network,
connecting up all parts of the NHS and top of that platform three
specifics:
- one, an electronic patient record
- two, electronic booking of appointments
- and the third was electronic prescribing."
He said that cost of the NPfIT was "staggering" and that the
benefits were "huge."
Paul Cundy, co-chair of the joint General Practitioners
Committee and Royal College of General Practitioners IT Group, said
of the meeting at Downing Street, "The programme was very
ambitious. That is because of the level at which it was pitched -
the famous Tony Blair sofa meeting. It was given a ludicrously
tight timescale."